7 Totally Bizarre Treatments For Chronic Pain

Doctors are using some pretty strange techniques to ease pain these days. And despite what you might imagine, "strange" doesn't always mean "experimental"—while some of these techniques are on the cutting edge, others have been in use for centuries. Here, 7 you should know about.

Spider VenomUse it for: Pain that isn't relieved with current treatmentsHow it works: The same compound spiders use to paralyze their prey long enough to suck them dry could be the next big thing in pain relief. Scientists recently identified seven compounds in tarantula venom that block an important step in your body's pain process. The paralytic essentially turns off one of the body's sodium channels, called Nav1.7, which sends pain signals to the brain. "Scientists looked at spider venom and other paralytic compounds and thought, Ok gosh, that could help quiet down nerves or manage pain if we translated it into medication," says Moshe Lewis, MD, a chronic pain management specialist at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco. But don't go scanning your pain reliever ingredients for spider venom. Scientists still need to figure out how to make it into a medicine that's safe for human use.

ElectricityUse it for: Lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, chronic headaches, and facial painHow it works: Electrical stimulation, also known as transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), sends electricity through your muscles and causes them to contract and release. A TENS unit comes with stickers that are placed on the lower back, neck or shoulder and provide electrical voltage directly to the muscle. TENS units relieve chronic muscle pain for about 50% of people who try it, according to Neel Mehta, MD, medical director of pain medicine at The Weill Cornell Medical Center. The electrical impulses are thought to release endorphins that block pain messages from reaching the brain. Doctors have started using a similar system to treat people who have chronic headaches. The Occipital Nerve Stimulator works in the same way, except the stickers are placed on the back or front of the head depending on where a patient feels pain. TENS systems are available at doctor's offices, medical supply groups, and online retailers like Amazon.com.

Spinal Cord StimulationUse it for: Sharp or stabbing pain, chronic back pain, pain that nothing else has worked onHow it works: It's like a pacemaker, but instead of working for your heart, a spinal cord stimulator sends waves of electricity along your spine. It creates a pleasant tingling sensation meant to distract the brain from feeling pain signals. When two signals approach the brain at the same time—one telling it to feel pain and the other a tingling sensation from the spinal cord stimulator—the brain can only allow one to pass. If the tingle from spinal cord stimulation is selected, "you can make a once-painful sensation more pleasant," says Mehta. Spinal Cord Stimulation works in about 50% of patients. But for those who do get relief, the minimally invasive surgery needed to install a stimulator can be a small price to pay.

Bee Venom AcupunctureUse it for:Rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, goutHow it works: A few dozen bee stings probably doesn't sound like a great treatment for pain, but in one study, 82% of patients treated with bee venom acupuncture reported significant pain relief. And of nearly a hundred studies testing bee venom acupuncture, says Darla Logan, NMD, a doctor from Arizona who specializes in naturopathic medicine, most demonstrate bee venom acupuncture is an effective pain treatment. Honeybee venom increases blood circulation, softens tissues, reduces inflammation, and increases feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, giving you an emotional boost in addition to treating your pain. Doctors sometimes prescribe sterilized bee venom for patients to inject themselves at home, though usually not in acupuncture points. Bee venom is also available online mixed into products like skin creams and dietary supplements. Of course, be sure to stay far, far away from this if you have an allergic reaction to bee stings.

Brain StimulationUse it for: Pain in the legs, arms, hands or feet that won't go away following an injuryHow it works: Sending an electrical shock through your brain may seem like something only Frankenstein could survive, but doctors who have experimented with deep brain stimulation have seen some success treating patients with Parkinson's disease and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The idea is to target just the area of the brain that's feeling pain. "For example, say you crushed your arm in the door and now your arm has a burning pain all the time," Mehta says. "Deep brain stimulation may have a role in specifically targeting the area of the brain that goes to the left arm." While deep brain stimulation has been successful in some cases, it's still an experimental procedure. Mehta says deep brain stimulation is not possible for people who have full body pain or for those whose pain can be treated by other methods.

SugarUse it for: Painful or loose ligaments, tendons, and jointsHow it works: Sorry, this isn't license for a new Oreo habit. The sugar that helps doesn't go in through your mouth—it gets injected directly into painful joints or ligaments. The process, called Prolotherapy, uses a sugar solution to tap into your body's natural healing process. The sugar solution, typically dextrose with an added anesthetic, causes irritation in the injured joint that then signals an injury to the brain. That signal begins the inflammatory process, which sends platelets to the "injured" area and flares up your immune system to first make the area swell and then build tissue that will protect the injury. "Your goal is actually to create scar tissue there, and scar tissue potentially firms up the joint itself, the ligaments in the joint, and that allows the joint to become more stable," Mehta says. Prolotherapy has been around since 500 BC, but really became popular in the last 20 years. Though there's still some debate about Prolotherapy's effectiveness, studies have shown Prolotherapy patients with osteoarthritis saw more improvement in joint pain than placebo groups. In addition to arthritis pain, Prolotherapy is used for injuries that didn't heal properly. "We are stimulating that process to happen because we either didn't get the healing completed the first time or we used some kind of mechanism like ice or anti-inflammatory medication to suppress the inflammation process," Logan says.

Your Own BloodUse it for: Muscle and joint injuries, tendon or ligament painHow it works: This technique, called Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), is Prolotherapy's cousin. The injection technique is the same, as is the way your body responds to the injection. Doctors draw about two vials of blood and put it into a machine that spins it fast enough to separate the components. They then take the separated platelets, suspend them in plasma, and inject that directly into the injured area. Instead of stimulating platelets to flow to an injury, PRP jumps right into the inflammatory process by putting platelets where you want them. "Platelets are the first responders in any injury," Logan says. "So instead of having to call the platelets to that area, we're actually going to activate them and put them in there so they're already on call, they're ready to start working the moment we inject them."

PRP may be custom-designed for your body, but it has mixed results in treating joint injuries. In one study, PRP patients reported a significant reduction in pain up to one year after the injection, while another study revealed no more pain relief than for a placebo group injected with a standard joint lubricant. How well PRP works can be affected by other factors like your overall health, how long you've been injured, as well as the number and type of treatments you've tried before, says Logan.

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